


Happy, Before

by CrimeAlley1048



Category: Batfamily - Fandom, Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), Grayson (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 07:36:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4951999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimeAlley1048/pseuds/CrimeAlley1048
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce isn't Batman, and he doesn't remember his children. This is understandably difficult, especially for Damian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy, Before

“Okay.” Todd led the way into his safehouse and switched on the lights. “Make yourself at home, I guess. This is what I’ve got.”  
Damian followed him inside, with Grayson close behind— the two of them stopped at the doorway to take a look around. It was very Todd, Damian decided: a neat space with a bed, a set of drawers, and a lot of weapons. Weapons _everywhere_. He wasn’t particularly surprised.  
“I think there’s a couple of air mattresses in the closet,” Todd continued. “Blankets are in the bottom drawer. Um, there’s a coffee maker in the kitchen? And I wouldn’t eat anything from the fridge— I haven’t been here in a few weeks. I’m gonna go get your bags.” He started for the door, then stopped again.  
“If you take anything off the bookshelves, make sure you put it back in alphabetical order. Okay. That’s all.” He slid past Damian, out the door and back towards the car, leaving the two of them alone. Grayson headed for the closet.  
“This is nicer than I was expecting.”  
Damian nodded— he wasn’t really in the mood to talk. He pulled a stack of blankets out of the bottom drawer and set them on the bed, then checked the other two drawers for the hell out it. There was a stack of money in one, with a fake passport and a large, twisted knife. Typical. The second drawer was locked— Damian pulled a pick out of his sleeve and forced it open.  
There was a framed photograph inside: Wayne Manor in the autumn. Grayson and Gordon were walking together under one of the oak trees, and Drake was sitting on the grass with a stack of textbooks spread out in front of him. His father was there too, standing with his back to the camera. Damian wasn’t in the picture. Before his time, he figured.  
He hefted the frame in his hands a few times and then passed it to Grayson, who inspected it with a smile.  
“Wow.” Dick raised an eyebrow. “I wonder where he got this. He wasn’t there that day.”  
“Pennyworth?”  
“Maybe.” He set the picture down on the dresser and began rummaging in the closet for the air mattresses.  
“You’re leaving tomorrow?” Damian asked.  
“Yeah, I have to get back.” Grayson hauled out a pair of boxes. “They say that if I don’t report to work, they’ll tell the world that Bruce is— was, I guess— Batman.”  
Damian sat down on the bed. “Maybe you should let them,” he said quietly.  
Grayson stared at him. “What?”  
“Let them. If everybody knew, _he_ would know too.”  
“You don’t really mean that.” Dick set the boxes on the floor. “That would change everything. It’s not fun when everybody finds out— trust me.”  
“It would still be better than—” Damian cut himself off. “Never mind.”  
“Listen, I know it’s hard, but he’s happy. He told me.”  
Why did people keep saying that? Damian pulled his legs up on the bed with him and wrapped his arms around his knees. They wouldn’t stop telling him how happy his father was, now that he didn’t have Batman, or his memories, or… Damian didn’t want to start a fight, but before he knew it, it was pouring out of him— the same idea that had been twisting around his insides ever since he’d found out.  
“He was happy _before_.”  
“Damian…”  
“He _was_. He had us. He had— We were together, and we were getting along, and I— These last couple of months—”  
“Damian.”  
“But you wouldn’t know about that, would you?”  
“Don’t.”  
“Just because _you’re_ prepared to pick up and leave your family, it doesn’t mean the rest of us are.” Damian wasn’t mad at Grayson— not really— but he couldn’t stop himself. He was angry and Dick was an easy target. “Some of us don’t abandon people.”  
“That’s not fair, and you _know it_.” There was an edge in Grayson’s voice, but Damian ignored the warning sign.  
“It’s all right for the rest of you! You can leave, but I don’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t— That’s my house and my father, and it’s all I have. What do you want me to do? Go back to the League?”  
“You’re being ridiculous.”  
“I spent years on this! I did everything you wanted me to. I gave up everything so I could have— You don’t get to take it away from me now.” Damian lay back on the bed, glaring at the ceiling. “I don’t want to stay here. I want to go home.”  
He wanted to watch the leaves fall off the oaks from inside his bedroom— the one that was his own, private, just for him. He wanted to walk Titus through the first frost of the year and play fetch in the graveyard that housed his ancestors’ bones. He wanted to sit on the countertops in the kitchen while Alfred made dinner and his father set the table— the three of them together in the big house that was _his_ — not just by birthright, but because he lived there. Home. He wanted to go _home_. He wanted his _father_.  
“I want—” Damian sat up, looked Grayson in the eye, and remembered how terrifying Dick could be when he was angry. “I just—”  
“Well you can’t. He’s happy.”  
Damian slid off the bed and walked towards the door, nearly colliding with Todd on his way back in. “I’m going to sleep with Drake,” he snapped, snatching his overnight bag out of Todd’s hand. He pushed past him, out into the street as fast as he could, away from Todd’s voice (“What the hell did you _do_?”) and his safehouse. He didn’t quite know where he was going.  
Happy, he thought as he ran, happy like the weight of his father’s arms around him when he woke up in the Cave, or the feeling of flying over the city, powerful and alive. Happy like an empty grave or a single pearl. Like a paper boat floating away into the darkness. Happy like a rooftop or Batman’s smile.  
He was happy, before. Surely his father was too?


End file.
